Early years (1887–1915) Childhood Madetoja was born in
Oulu,
Finland, on 17 February 1887, the third son of Anders Antinpoika Madetoja (1855–1888) and Anna Elisabeth, née Hyttinne (1858–1934). To provide for his family, Madetoja's father, a first mate on a merchant ship, had earlier emigrated in 1886 to the United States, only to die in 1888 of
tuberculosis along the
Mississippi River. Leevi thus never met his father, and his mother raised him and his brother, Yrjö (1885–1918). (Madetoja's oldest brother, Hjalmar, had died as an infant in 1883.) The family lived in poverty and struggled with hunger, and as a boy Leevi worked variously as a street cleaner and as a laborer at a sawmill. Although his first attempts at composition were at the age of eight, Madetoja was by no means a musical prodigy. He studied the violin and piano on his own and played the
mouth organ as a boy. Additionally, Madetoja became a skilled
kantele player: he received a 10-string kantele on his tenth birthday, and in secondary school at the
Oulu Lyceum, he upgraded to a 30-string version. (Madetoja is certainly the only notable classical composer in history whose primary instrument was the kantele.) At the Lyceum, Leevi sang in, and eventually directed, the school's male and mixed choirs.
Student years In 1906, Madetoja enrolled at the
University of Helsinki and the
Helsinki Music Institute, where he studied
music theory,
composition, and piano under
Armas Järnefelt and
Erik Furuhjelm. A year later, in the summer of 1907, the Finnish Literature Society sponsored Madetoja's trip to the
Inkeri region in Russia so that he could collect folk songs. Additional good fortune arrived in 1908, when Jean Sibelius, Finland's most famous composer, accepted Leevi for private instruction. Although his lessons with Sibelius at
Ainola were unstructured and sporadic, Madetoja valued his time with the master and assimilated some of Sibelius's unique idiom. The two studied together until 1910. (For more see:
Madetoja and Sibelius.) At the Music Institute, Madetoja's premiered his first compositions at student concerts: in December 1908, the Op. 2 songs,
Yksin and
Lähdettyäs; and on 29 May 1909, the Piano Trio, Op. 1 (second and third movements only). His public introduction arrived in January 1910 when
Robert Kajanus, chief conductor of the
Helsinki Orchestral Society, conducted Madetoja's
Elegia (from the four-movement
Symphonic Suite, Op. 4) to great success; critics described the
Elegia as the "first master work" of a budding "natural orchestral composer". (c. 1890s), where Madetoja studied from 1910 to 1911; he fell in love with the city and returned many times After graduating from the Music Institute and the University of Helsinki in 1910, Madetoja took up a career as a music critic, penning essays and reviews for the
Säveletär magazine and, later, the . Additional praise followed Madetoja's first composition concert in Helsinki on 26 September 1910, at which he conducted the Piano Trio and excerpts from the
Symphonic Suite and
Chess, Op. 5 (excerpted from incidental music Madetoja had composed for
Eino Leino's play). The positive reviews did, however, contain a note of concern: given Madetoja's plans to travel to Paris for additional education, the critic of
Uusi Suometar worried about the negative influence "French modern atonal composition" could have on "this fresh northern nature [Madetoja]". Madetoja's interest in the Paris music scene was a result of the enthusiastic reports of his composer-friend,
Toivo Kuula, who had earlier studied in the city. With funding from the Finnish government and a letter of introduction from Sibelius, Madetoja applied to be a student of Vincent d'Indy, who headed a school of thought founded upon the symphonic principles of César Franck. The two only met for one lesson, however, as d'Indy took ill and Madetoja's plans collapsed; he would spend the rest of his time in Paris without a teacher, attending concerts and working on his own compositions (the result was the
Concert Overture, Op. 7). After a brief stay in Oulu (where he composed and premiered on 29 September 1911 a short
cantata for mixed choir and piano,
Merikoski, Op. 10), Madetoja undertook a second trip abroad, this time to
Vienna and
Berlin, in the autumn of 1911. Sibelius again aided his pupil, arranging for Madetoja to study under his former teacher,
Robert Fuchs. While in Vienna, Madetoja audited composition and conducting courses at the
Conservatory, observed
Franz Schalk's rehearsals, and composed
Dance Vision, Op. 11.
Conductorships In 1912, Kajanus appointed Madetoja and Kuula—who had together returned to Helsinki from Berlin—as assistant conductors of the Helsinki Orchestral Society, Madetoja's term lasting until 1914. The appointment put Madetoja in the middle of Helsinki's "orchestra feud", as Kajanus' Orchestral Society squared off against
Georg Schnéevoigt's newly created Helsinki Symphony Orchestra, which consisted mainly of foreign musicians. Madetoja's position with the Orchestral Society provided him the opportunity to perform a number of his compositions: on 12 October 1912,
Dance Vision premiered under Madetoja's baton, and even more importantly, he had his second composing concert on 14 October 1913, where he premiered the
Concert Overture and
Kullervo, Op. 15, a symphonic poem based on the Kalevalic
tragic hero of the same name. Madetoja earned little as an assistant conductor and thus supplemented his income as a music critic for
Uusi Suometar, becoming well known for his articles on the French music scene and his recurring travels to Paris. , to whom Madetoja dedicated his First Symphony The dawn of the
First World War in July 1914 brought an end to the feud between the two rival orchestras: the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra collapsed after the German musicians who formed its backbone were expelled from the country, and Kajanus and Schnéevoigt divided conducting duties for a joint orchestra, the Helsinki City Orchestra, that consisted of forty players surviving on starvation wages. The merger rendered Madetoja (and, a year later, Kuula) superfluous, and Madetoja pawned his
metronome to stave off penury. Despite the hostilities, he traveled to Russia in September 1914 to take up the conductorship of the Viipuri Orchestra (1914–1916). Madetoja found the group in a state of devastation: he was able to piece together 19 musicians, a reality that forced him to spend much of his time finding and arranging material for such an undersized ensemble.
Mature career (1916–1930) A new Finnish symphonist While juggling his responsibilities in
Viipuri, Madetoja worked on his most first major compositions, the
First Symphony in Helsinki (Kajanus the dedicatee), conducting the premiere on 10 February 1916; apparently he completed the finale just before this performance. The critics, some of whom—for example in
Hufvudstadsbladet—noted the influence of Sibelius, received the work warmly. Buoyed by this success, Madetoja relocated to Helsinki and began composing a second symphony in the summer. To support himself, he began work as a music critic for the
Helsingin Sanomat newspaper (1916–32) and as a teacher of music theory and history at the Music Institute (1916–39). In 1917, the Finnish government granted Madetoja a three-year artist's pension, which allowed him to focus more on composing. (In 1918, the pension was extended for life.) In 1918, the embers of the First World War ignited into civil war (27 January – 15 May 1918) between socialist Red Guards and the nationalist Whites. The war brought personal tragedy to Madetoja: On 9 April, Red Guards captured and executed Yrjö Madetoja, Leevi's brother, during the
Battle of Antrea in
Kavantsaari. It fell to Leevi to inform his mother: A month later, during
May Day celebrations, Kuula got into an altercation with a group of
White Army officers, one of whom shot him to death. These two losses deeply upset Madetoja and likely found expression in the symphony, a composition in which he had already been contemplating Finland's fate in the wake of world war and a
revolution in Russia; the epilogue Madetoja affixed to the work is one of pain and resignation: "I have fought my battle and now withdraw". , who encouraged Madetoja's early travels to France The 17 December 1918 premiere of the Second Symphony under Kajanus's baton was extraordinarily well received. Katila, for example, proclaimed Madetoja's latest work to be "the most remarkable achievement in our music since the monumental series of Sibelius". (Upon his mother's death in 1934, Madetoja retroactively dedicated the Second Symphony to her.) Around this time, Madetoja also published in
Lumikukkia magazine a piece for solo piano, originally titled
Improvisation in Memory of my Brother Yrjö. In 1919, Madetoja expanded the piece into a three-movement suite, renaming it
The Garden of Death, Op. 41, and removing the reference to his brother; the suite shares melodic motifs with the Second Symphony. The 1920s found Madetoja financially stable but stretched thin. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at the Music Institute and criticism for
Helsingin Sanomat, by June 1928 Madetoja had added the position of music teacher at his other
alma mater, the University of Helsinki. Despite the trifling salary, the post held great prestige, having previously been the chair of
Fredrik Pacius (1835–69), (1870–96), and (
controversially) Kajanus (1897–27), and included among its tasks the conductorship of the Academic Orchestra. He also took on administrative roles in the music profession: in 1917, he was a founding member of the Finnish Composers' League (forerunner to the , founded in 1945), serving as its secretary and, later, president; in 1928, moreover, he helped establish the
Finnish Composers' Copyright Society Teosto, serving on its board of directors from 1928 to 1947 and as its chairman from 1937 to 1947. Despite manifold commitments, Madetoja (somehow) found time to compose three of his most important, large-scale works: an opera,
The Ostrobothnians, Op. 45 (1918–23); the Third Symphony, Op. 55 (1925–26); and a ballet-pantomime,
Okon Fuoko, Op. 58 (1925–27). When taken together, these three works solidified his position as Finland's premiere, post-Sibelian composer.
A Finnish national opera (in blue), from which Madetoja hailed and about which he wrote his most important work, the opera,
The Ostrobothnians The Ostrobothnians commission, first offered to Kuula in November 1917, was for an opera based upon the popular 1914
folk play by the Ostrobothnian journalist and writer,
Artturi Järviluoma. Although Kuula viewed the play as a strong candidate for a libretto, its
realism conflicted with his personal preference for fairy tale or legend-based subject matter, in keeping with the
Wagnerian operatic tradition. When Kuula refused the opportunity, the commission fell to Madetoja, who had also expressed interest in the project. The composition process, begun in late December 1917, took Madetoja much longer than expected; letters to his mother indicate that he had entertained hopes of completing the opera by the end of 1920 and, when this deadline passed, 1921 and, eventually, 1922. In the end, the opera was not completed until September 1923, although it would be another full year until the opera premiered. Nevertheless, some of the music (from Acts I and II) did see the light of day sooner, as Madetoja had pieced together a five-number orchestral suite at the behest of Kajanus, who premiered the suite on 8 March 1923 in
Bergen, Norway during his orchestra tour; the reviews were positive, describing the music as "interesting and strange". The first performance of the complete opera on 25 October 1924 at the Finnish National Opera (which, incidentally, was also the one-thousandth performance in the history of the Opera House) was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of Madetoja's entire career. Indeed, with
The Ostrobothnians, Madetoja succeeded where his teacher, Jean Sibelius,
famously had failed: in the creation of a Finnish national opera, a watershed moment for a country lacking an operatic tradition of its own. In
Helsingin sanomat, Katila wrote on behalf of many Finns, calling
The Ostrobothnians "the most substantial work in the whole of Finnish opera".
The Ostrobothnians immediately became a fixture of the Finnish operatic repertoire (where it remains today), and was even produced abroad during Madetoja's lifetime, in
Kiel, Germany in 1926;
Stockholm in 1927;
Gothenburg in 1930; and,
Copenhagen in 1938.
Two final masterworks After the success of
The Ostrobothnians, Madetoja departed for France, staying for six months in
Houilles, a small town just outside of Paris. Here, in the quiet of the Parisian suburbs, Madetoja began to compose his Third Symphony, Op. 55, and upon returning to Finland in October (due to financial worries), his work on the project continued. The new symphony received its premiere in Helsinki on 8 April 1926, and although Madetoja received the usual praise, the audience and critics found the new work somewhat perplexing: with the monumental, elegiac Second Symphony having set expectations, the optimism and restraint of the Third came as a surprise, its (subsequent) significance eluding nearly everyone. Some years later, the French music writer,
Henri-Claude Fantapié, described the cheerful, pastorale Third Symphony as a "sinfonia Gallica" in spirit and explained the premiere as thus: "The listeners expected the opera [
The Ostrobothnians] to be followed by a nationalistic anthem and were disappointed to hear something that seemed to them to be hermetic and that, to crown it all, was lacking in pomposity and solemnity … the properties the majority of Finnish music-lovers always expect in a new work." Nevertheless, today the Third Symphony is widely regarded as Madetoja's "masterpiece", the rare Finnish symphony equal in stature to Sibelius's seven essays in the form. '', a tragic love story set in ancient Japan, illustrates the West's appetite for oriental themes While on his way to Paris in 1925, Madetoja had met a music publisher from Copenhagen,
Wilhelm Hansen, who placed him into contact with the Danish playwright
Poul Knudsen. A libretto for a new ballet-pantomime, based upon "exotic" Japanese themes, was on offer and Madetoja accepted the project with alacrity. Having outlined his plan for the new commission while staying in Houilles, Madetoja he more or less composed the Third Symphony and
Okon Fuoko simultaneously, although the pressure to complete the former was so great that Madetoja was compelled to place the ballet-pantomime aside until December 1926. Although Madetoja completed the score in late 1927, scheduling the ballet-pantomime's premiere in Copenhagen proved difficult, despite the enthusiasm of the chief conductor of the
Royal Danish Orchestra,
Georg Høeberg, who after a test rehearsal had proclaimed the score a "masterpiece". The primary cause of the delay appears to have been the difficulty of casting a lead actor, as the part required both singing and miming; Knudsen insisted upon—and opted to wait for—an actor then on leave from the theatre,
Johannes Poulsen. The production languished unperformed until it (finally) received its premiere on 12 February 1930, not in Copenhagen, but rather in Helsinki, at the
Finnish National Opera under the baton of . The performance was the first significant setback of Madetoja's career: although the critics "unanimously praised" Madetoja's music, the consensus opinion was that Knudsen's libretto—with its awkward mixture of song, melodramatic spoken dialogue, dance, and pantomime—was a dramatic failure. In the end,
Okon Fuoko received only three performances total and the Danish premiere never took place. Seeking to salvage his score, Madetoja in 1927 pieced together the six-number
Okon Fuoko Suite No. 1, which proved a success; the composer's plans to set two additional suites never materialized.
Later years (1931–1947) , with whom Madetoja collaborated for his second opera,
Juha Declining fortunes For Madetoja, the 1930s brought hardship and disappointment. During this time, he was at work on two new major projects: a second opera,
Juha, and a fourth symphony, each to be his final labor in their respective genres. The former, with a libretto by the famous Finnish soprano,
Aino Ackté (adapted from the 1911 novel by writer
Juhani Aho), had fallen to Madetoja after a series of events: first, Sibelius—ever the believer in "absolute music"—had refused the project in 1914; and, second, in 1922, the Finnish National Opera had rejected a
first attempt by
Aarre Merikanto as "too Modernist" and "too demanding on the orchestra", leading the composer to withdraw the score. Two failures in, Ackté thus turned to Madetoja, the successful
The Ostrobothnians of whom was firmly ensconced in the repertoire, to produce a safer, more palatable version of the opera. The death of Madetoja's mother, Anna, on 26 March 1934, interrupted his work on the opera; the loss so devastated Madetoja that he fell ill and could not travel to Oulu for the funeral. Madetoja completed work on the opera by the end of 1934 and it premiered to considerable fanfare at the Finnish National Opera on 17 February 1935, the composer's forty-eighth birthday. The critics hailed it as a "brilliant success", an "undisputed masterpiece of Madetoja and Finnish opera literature". Nevertheless, the "euphoria" of the initial performance eventually wore off and, to the composer's disappointment,
Juha did not equal the popularity of
The Ostrobothnians. Indeed, today
Juha is most associated with Merikanto, whose modernist
Juha (first performed in the 1960s) is the more enduringly popular of the two; having been displaced by Merikanto's, Madetoja's
Juha is rarely performed.
The lost symphony The composition of the Fourth Symphony remains a mystery, although Madetoja's chief biographer,
Erkki Salmenhaara, has unearthed the key details. In the spring of 1930, Madetoja told
Karjala newspaper that he had begun a new symphony with the themes derived from "Finnish folk song". An eight-year gestation ensued. Plans to complete the symphony in time for his fiftieth birthday on 17 February 1937 did not come to fruition, and in July 1937, Madetoja retired to the
spa town of in
Iisalmi to focus further on the symphony. As the Fourth's finish line neared in the spring of 1938, Madetoja traveled to
Nice hoping that France, as it had a decade earlier with the Third Symphony, would stoke his creative fires. Misfortune quickly dashed Madetoja's hopes: while passing through Paris on his way to Southern France, his suitcase—which contained the Fourth Symphony—was stolen at a railway station in the city; the near-completed manuscript was never recovered. With his inspiration and memory in decline, Madetoja never undertook a reconstruction of the lost score, notwithstanding his (unsuccessful) 1941 application for a stipend to "finish my fourth symphony that is underway". When a student of his, , asked whether Madetoja could recreate the symphony, he replied, "Do you think that I could rewrite something that a thief has taken"? By January 1942, he was hospitalized for
alcoholism. During his treatment, Madetoja occupied himself with old issues of
Musiikkitieto magazine and, when he came across a story about his time in Runni, he did not recall having composed the Fourth. ("I wonder if anything has been written at all"?)
Death In the 1940s, Madetoja battled poor physical health, depression, a collapsing marriage, and waning artistic inspiration; his already less-than-prolific pace declined to a crawl. During this time, Madetoja orchestrated his song cycle for soprano and piano,
Autumn, Op. 68, a setting of his wife's poems he had completed eight years earlier. With its mature idiom and mournful outlook on the human experience, some sources describe
Autumn as Madetoja's "testament". Otherwise, Madetoja occupied himself with smaller forms, primarily for choir a cappella; the seven Op. 81 songs for male choir were completed in 1946, as were the two Op. 82 songs for mixed choir. His final completed piece was
Matkamies (
Wayfarer) for female choir, written in the year of his death (sketch completed by Olavi Pesonen). Madetoja died at approximately 11:00 am on 6 October 1947 at the Konkordia Methodist hospital in Helsinki. Although some sources attribute his death to heart attack, no surviving record indicates a conclusive cause of death. The Madetoja funeral took place five days later on 11 October at the
Helsinki Old Church; the president of Finland,
Juho Kusti Paasikivi, supplied a wreath, as did the Ministry of Education, the City of Oulu, and other institutions and mourners. Critics praised Madetoja in obituaries and Onerva published a memorial poem. Madetoja left (very early) plans for a number of never-realized works, including a violin concerto, a requiem mass, a third opera (a "Finnish
Parsifal"), and
Ikävyys (
Melancholy), a composition for voice and piano after
Aleksis Kivi. Madetoja (joined by Onerva in 1972) is buried at
Hietaniemi cemetery () in Helsinki, a national landmark and frequent tourist attraction that features the graves of famous Finnish military figures, politicians, and artists. Unveiled in 1955, the gravestone—located on block V8 in the Old Area (), near the cemetery wall (circle marker 48 on the following map; approx. )—is by the Finnish sculptor
Kalervo Kallio and is courtesy of TEOSTO. Also buried in the cemetery are Madetoja's friend, Toivo Kuula (d. 1918; block U19), as well as Onerva's onetime paramour, Eino Leino (d. 1926; block U21). == Personal life ==